Top Ten (July 2009)

I'm starting a new "column" here on the blog. It will be called, not so cleverly, "top ten". Basically, the top then things I'm into at this particular moment. And I figure, it'll run just once a month. Cause once a week would just be annoying to anyone reading this blog, and once a day... I don't think I have ten tops for every day of living. Maybe?

So... Top Ten things for July, 2009! (in no particular order)



1. FOR JUST ONE DAY I saw an advance copy of this on the exhibits floor at ALA last week. Thanks to a tip from pal, Jeff Newman. Beautifully drawn and a good intro, for me, to illustrator, Marc Boutavant! Can't wait to see this and more.



2. Nutella I've been putting it on toasted bagels for breakfast. It's a good change from my usual bowl of cereal. Is it healthy? I'm guessing, maybe not?



3. Yo Gabba Gabba! I've heard about this, here and there, for a while. I guess it's THE kids show for kids with hipster parents. Checked out a dvd from the library (we ain't got the fancy cable tv) and it is actually cool! Looks like a throwback or homage to, like, those Kroft kid shows of the 70's. I think. With style coming out the nose. My favorite is Muno. Or Brobee.



4. Romy's new tricks. Nowadays, she's babbling (ma-ma-ma-ma-ma....) and popping her lips and sitting up all on her own. And she's pooping the light fantastic (solid foods!).



5. HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE. Saw this last week on opening day cause Julie's a superfan. It's awesome! To be fair, I only read the first book, so I'm not that equipped to talk in depth. But the flicks keep getting darker and darker with just the right amount of darkness. After leaving the theater (gloomy ending) it hit me that the Potter-verse to kids today is what the world of Star Wars was to me when I was a kid. The Dumbledore ending was my Han Solo frozen in carbonite ending. Snif. But actually, I think POTTER is a notch above STARS cause it's BOOKS and it's a friend to both boy and girl.

6. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE trailer. This is nothing new to the internet. I'm not getting some kinda scoop with this. But we just saw it on the big screen (before POTTER) and it really kicks it up a notch. Awesome trailer. But I'm not completely sold. Still not convinced this sacred kid book needed to be cooled up by the likes of Eggers, Spike Jonze, or Arcade Fire. To be determined.



7. La Croix sparkling waters. A good sub for the sugary sodas at lunchtime.



8. Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. One of my fave kid book blogs. Great illustrator interviews and book reviews. Good taste in picture books, these gals!



9. Kalamata olives. I'm a fan (but not a connoisseur) of a salty olive snack. We even bought an olive tree this spring to try and do some homegrown. I have just recently honed in on the kalamata. Sodium lovers rejoice! It's like a freakin salt lick.



10. TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT by Neil Young. At this point in life, I tend to steer clear of the music of my time. Keeping fresh with new music is too much time and maintenance. Music gets younger, I get older, etc. And who needs it when there's so much good stuff to mine through of days long since past. I like "Mellow My Mind". Busted voice never sounded so good.


That's it. 10 for this month. Though I may have a special TOP TEN edition after we get back from comic-con next week. How could I not?

Deconstructing ALA Chicago

Just got home from ALA Chicago yesterday afternoon. All the bags and books and suitcases are still flopped down by the door we brought them in. It was a wild ride. A lot of fun. Just collecting thoughts and getting back into some routine again today.

Julie and I live only about an hour's drive north of Chicago, but we stayed at the place of some very generous friends over the weekend (thank you GENEROUS friends!). This saved us lots of time and headaches with driving back/forth. This also served as our first trial-run of traveling with Romy and having her sleep and live in a place that's not our home. It went off without a hitch! Thanks to Romy for being such an awesome baby!

Anyhow, as reported in an earlier blog post, I did a signing, Julie did a signing. Julie had a nice dinner with lots of librarians, lots of friends from Feiwel and Friends, and another YA author, Andrew Smith. Julie, Andrew, and myself also partied it up with a boatload of bloggers and various Macmillan personnel the following eve at the "Macmillan Suite", Omni Hotel. Yes.

My signing was mostly to plug good ol' MIGHTY CASEY (where, incidentally, I was given a cryptic James Preller message regarding cupcakes. New friend Travis Jonker-- capt. of the great kidlit blog 100 scope notes--was the deliverer of said message. My ol' pal Preller. His way of keeping me company at the signing.) Anyhow... the signing was awesome, and I unloaded, signed, and sketched in a good number of books. I was also able to unload a nice stack of TROUBLE GUM f+g's to the interested masses. 500 packs of Feiwel-produced TROUBLE GUM bubble gum were brought to the conference, and every last one was snatched up! Thanks to all who stopped by and said hi, or bought books, chatted, etc.

The blogger bash was later that eve. A very nice group of people. Travis turned up there too, along with ol' pal Esme Raji Codell, Esther Hershenhorn, Betsy Bird, Karen Romano Young... many more. These are just some of the people I talked to. Romy was the life of the party. She seemed to warm up to new pal, Andrew Smith the most. I mean, she let him hold her without totally freaking out. Sadly, we forgot to bring the camera to this event and came back with no pics. Dang.

Julie's signing was the next day. Also a very sweet success. Somewhere around all of these happenings, we managed to bounce around the exhibits floor and pick up books from some of our favorite kid book creators. Romy, strapped to Julie's chest, was front and center for the action.

Anyways... yeah. The weekend was a great time. Now, here are 19 pics to illustrate...


My signing is underway. That's Liz Szabla in the background, editor extraordinaire and pal. What a great smile!



Here I am signing a copy of MIGHTY CASEY for a special someone (not pictured).



I also signed a fat stack of F+G's of my forthcoming, TROUBLE GUM. Note the bin in front with the great F+F-created TROUBLE GUM bubble gum boxes. They were nearly gone at this point.



Uri Shulevitz was signing copies of HOW I LEARNED GEOGRAPHY next door at Roaring Brook. Same time as my signing (guess which line was bigger). Afterwards, he stopped by to talk to Jean Feiwel. I nabbed him so I could get a picture of him with Julie and Romy. A genuinely sweet guy.



Here's the great Jean Feiwel talking with Julie and Romy. Romy is reaching for something, no doubt, to try and eat it.



Here I am with good ol' pal, Jeff Newman. Jeff is a talented author/illustrator who lives up in Milwaukee. And he's tall!



Jeff met Julie and Romy for the first time. Later, Romy showed Jeff her famous spit-up-down-Mom's-arm routine.



Here I am changing a diaper on the conference floor. You know how we do.



Julie at her signing. Romy was a great cheerleader.



An old friend we hadn't seen in years, Liz Mason (manager of Chicago's greatest comic shop, Quimby's), turned up at Julie's signing. It was such a great surprise.



A very happy trio.



Lovely Julie. Lovely Romy. Mo Willems.



Our new pal, Feiwel and Friends novelist, Andrew Smith. He gives good, warm, fatherly vibe.



Kicking back at a display of original art being raffled off to conference attendees. One of which is mine, from TROUBLE GUM. I'm actually lumped in with Uri Shulevitz, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Peter McCarty, and Danica Novgorodoff!



One more for posterity.



Julie and Romy pose with talented pic book author/illustrator, Peter Brown.



ALA pal, Nina Hess signs at Wizards of the Coast booth, her Practical Guide to Monsters. You should've seen the line she had! Nice, Nina.



Julie and Feiwel and Friends friend, Ksenia Winnicki. I learned that she actually had a part in production of one of my previous books, RIGHTY AND LEFTY.



In our final hours at the conference, Julie and I did a double-header signing. Well, triple header. Check out that scrumptious Romy smile!


And... That's it for another ALA conference.

Next stop... San Diego Comic-con! Yeah!

Sketchbook

A couple of new things torn straight outta the sketchbook.

If you're interested in the details, click the image for zooming in...

ALA appearances and TROUBLE reviews

This weekend, the annual American Librarian Association (ALA) conference is being held in Chicago. That's a stone's throw from here, so Julie and I will be all up in that. We've done our fair share of ALA's, and I do love the librarians (I should hope so... I married one, right?). A super-friendly bunch. If you are reading this, and are planning on attending, I hope you will meet me at my book signing:

Saturday July 11, 11:00-noon. Feiwel and Friends booth (#1813)

I'll be signing copies of MIGHTY CASEY and handing out f+g's of TROUBLE GUM and the super-cool F+F-produced TROUBLE GUM bubble gum packages. Gotta get some buzz going!



Julie will be doing a signing, as well, also at the F+F booth on Sunday, July 12, 11:00-noon. Signing copies of GET WELL SOON and signing/giving away galleys of her forthcoming YA novel, INTO THE WILD NERD YONDER.

We are both guests at a F+F hosted bash from 4:00–6:00 in the Macmillan Children’s Publisher suite at the Omni Hotel. This is an event by invitation for bloggers and librarians who support the world o' kids lit. If you got the invite, I hope to see you there!

Back to some TROUBLE GUM buzz, I just had two great reviews in the inbox this morning from editor and pal, Liz Szabla. From Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly! Read on, if you please...


Kirkus Reviews – 7/15/09

Cordell, Matthew
TROUBLE GUM
Illus. by the author

Despite Mom’s sage warnings, piglet Ruben and his little brother Julius wreak havoc with multiple sticks of gum (first proffered by, then filched from Grammy) and a newly knit blanket. Ruben’s purposeful instruction sticks (“This is how the big pigs stretch a piece of gum, Julius”): Even after the boys’ de-gumming bath, it’s Julius who provides both the ultimate laugh and the biggest bubble by far. Cordell mingles retro elements effectively, with a three-color palette of gray, pig-pink and red text typeset in Century Schoolhouse (think Dick and Jane) and myriad ink-and-wash spots that channel Steig, big time. These vignettes are offset by genuinely funny sound effects—“crinkle wrackle crackle” yields to “smik smak smak,” which leads inevitably to “stuuuurch…” The display type in many sizes fills copious white space—in fact, the generous 48-page layout is a bit of a stretch for this tale. There’s much detail to pore and giggle over, though, and the endpapers—front ones sporting bubbles blown to enormous size then bursting impressively in the back—are a hoot. Packs plenty of pop. (Picture book. 3-6)




Publishers Weekly, 7/6/09

Trouble Gum Matthew Cordell. Feiwel and Friends, $16.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-312-38774-7
Working with a stripped-down palette of black, white, red and bubblegum pink, Cordell's (Mighty Casey) first solo effort evokes irrepressible boyhood with laughs throughout. Stir-crazy on a rainy day, older brother Ruben and his little brother, Julius, two piglets at loose ends, are given some gum by their Grammy, but not without a reminder from Mom about the bubblegum rules (“Don't swallow your gum. Don't play with your gum. And don't blow big, sticky bubbles with your gum”). Unsurprisingly, they can't resist the temptation to do all these things and more (“Fortunately, this wasn't the first piece of gum Ruben had gotten stuck in Mom's knitting,” reads the text as spot art shows Ruben frantically tearing at a gum-smeared blanket. “He knew just what to do”). Dozens of Steig-like pen and ink drawings show the antics of the partners in crime and Ruben's attempts to educate Julius in the ways of acting like a “big pig.” The picture of a loving, unpretentious family sustains the hilarity throughout, while creative onomatopoeia (“SMAK SMAK SMIK SMAK”) provides yet more giggles. Ages 2–6. (Aug.)

New stuff on matthewcordell.com

It's been a long time coming, but I just finished a much needed update to the old website. Seeing as I'll be gearing up soon to promo TROUBLE GUM, I put a drawing from TG on the home page. Also, in the "work" section, I've added work from TROUBLE GUM, TOOT TOOT ZOOM!, and MIGHTY CASEY. For each of these books there are sample spreads to view as well as details of artwork from each book to click through.

Whenever possible, I like to ask my publisher to supply me with the top-notch scans that are done when the book is in production. The publisher pays to have the original art scanned and color-balanced and contrast-adjusted so that, when in print, it looks as close to the originals as possible. I got the good scans for MIGHTY CASEY and TROUBLE GUM. It never quite came together though, for TOOT. Please don't judge my sub-par scannings in that click through! D.I.Y., baby.

Anyhow, please do go for a look, starting here:

http://www.matthewcordell.com

These Old Things

Now that I've joined Facebook, I have a lot of people, in the list of friends, from the college years. Which, for me, closed up in spring 1997. I kicked around in that college town for an additional two years after, finally leaving Rock Hill, SC (and the Winthrop University community) in the spring of 1999. Anyhow, now that I've put this into some context, I've gotten a little nostalgic (Facebook) about some of those days. Not just for the people memories, but also for some of the art I was making at the time. Back then, I was shooting exclusively for the world of "fine art"--with mixed-media drawing/painting. Last week I sucked it up and opened some of the old slide files. Thumbed through some old work. I tend to not like doing this.

But, interestingly enough, I do think this stuff, in parts, holds relatively strong (which is saying a lot, cause typically I cringe up tight when I look at anything I've done in past times). So, why not share some here? Definitely a shift from these to where I'm at now, illustration-wise, but my emphasis was on drawing then, and my emphasis is on drawing now. So it makes sense. There was another transitional work period, for me, in between these drawings and today. Maybe I'll show that work at another time. To connect the dots.

These are/were mostly medium-to-large in size. In the 20" x 30" range. And mostly on paper. If interested, click on the image to get a closer look.




From the group, I like this one best. The bat up top--I like it. The two down low kinda throw the composition though...





This is a collaborative painting I did with painting and printmaking Prof., Paul Martyka. Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, gesso, on board (wood panel).



This is the smallest piece of the bunch. About 8" x 8". On paper. Collaborative with pal, Paul Matheny. He's a museum curator down in Columbia, SC now. And still painting. Nice guy.



Large mixed-media drawing/painting on a found piece of drywall. Left this behind in my move from SC to Chicago. Sits above friends' fireplace mantle today. Still in the south.



The bird is cool. The rest is rubbish.


Thanks for allowing my indulgence down memory lane. I also got to use my scanner, for the first time, to scan 35mm slides in doing this. All in all, a decent exercise.

RUSH

There is nothing quite like seeing a bound, finished book for the first time. It is not always good, but more often than not, it is good. Yesterday, I got an advance copy of TROUBLE GUM. And it was quite a rush. Thanks to my team of Rich Deas, Rebecca Davis, and Liz Szabla, I'm very, very happy with it.

Something new from the sketchbook...

TROUBLE GUM gum!

In September, my first author/illo picture book comes out, TROUBLE GUM. This is the first kids book I both illustrated and wrote. So it holds a dear place in my heart. I was really glad to hear it was getting a good reception over at the publisher, Feiwel and Friends. Then, I was really glad again to hear that they were going to be making giveaways to promote the book--TROUBLE GUM gum. Nice.

Then, I got an envelope full of these babies and I was totally psyched. Little boxes of colorful Chiclet-style gum--decorated in art from the book. Too nice.

Go Feiwel and Friends! Go TROUBLE GUM! September '09!

Get yer contest on (again!)

Dear readers,

My lovely wife, Julie Halpern, talented scribe of YA lit (and picture books alike) is holding a contest on her blog. It's much like the one I just held for TOOT TOOT ZOOM! in that, if you place your name in a comment on her latest blog post, you are entered into a raffle to win a free copy of her upcoming novel, INTO THE WILD NERD YONDER. This book is not yet released--drops in September this year. So the winner will receive an Advance Reader Copy (or "ARC" or "galley") of the book. She's also just posted a hot-off-the-Adobe-InDesign pic of the tres COOL cover design. Done up by our friend and bad boy designer, Rich Deas, at Feiwel and Friends. Take a look!


Check this out, and get yourself entered here!

The name will be pulled and announced on Friday, June 12th, so act now!

And the TOOT goes to...

Thanks very much to all who participated in the TOOT TOOT ZOOM! giveaway contest. I wish I had enough to go all around, but like the Highlander, there can be only one.

The winner is...

Liz Briesemeister!

Please email me, Liz, with your address, and I will get your signed copy of TOOT TOOT ZOOM! in the mail right away.

matthew@matthewcordell.com

Thank you, again, to all who played. Keep checking in often for more games, more prizes, and more fun.